History of St. Valentine’s Day

February 11, 2010

HISTORY OF ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
Valentine or Valentinus, is the name of at least three martyred saints. The most celebrated are the two martyrs whose festivals fall on February 14, the one, a Roman priest, the other, bishop of Terni. It would appear from the legends that both lived during the reign of the Emperor Claudius [...]

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History of Facebook: The Social Network at Six

February 5, 2010

HISTORY OF FACEBOOK
Yesterday marked the 6th birthday of the social networking site Facebook. What started back at Harvard — and initially only open to college students or those with email addresses that ended in .edu until September 2006 — Facebook is now the fastest growing social network with over 400 million people using it to [...]

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History of the Super Bowl: Just another Religious Holiday?

February 5, 2010

HISTORY OF THE SUPER BOWL
The Super Bowl, also known as simply Superbowl — a territory acquisition athletic contest played upon a fixed agrarian grid using as a token an inflated porcine prolate spheroid — is the most important holiday of the year in America. Some will say that it is a secular holiday, others argue [...]

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History of Groundhog Day

February 1, 2010

HISTORY OF GROUNDHOG DAY
Groundhog Day comes from Candlemas Day, observed for centuries in parts of Europe on February 2 where the custom was to have the clergy bless candles and distribute them to the people. This seems to have derived from the pagan celebration of Imbolc — the Feast of the goddess Bridget, or in [...]

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History of the iPad: When is a Tablet not a Tablet?

January 27, 2010

HISTORY OF THE IPAD

Question: How can you have a “history” of a device that was just announced today?
Answer: This has been the longest anticipated unannounced product in history, or at least Apple history. It has been a veritable speculation-o-rama.

Question: I don’t get the iPad. Isn’t it just like a giant iPhone?
Short answer: Yes, it’s essentially [...]

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History of Australia Day

January 26, 2010

HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA DAY
For our friends Down Under
Did you know that the history of European Australia is tied to the American Revolutionary War?
Back when America was part of the British Commonwealth it was convenient for England to transport its convicts to the Colonies. Indeed, it was considered more humane to “transport” prisoners than to execute [...]

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History of Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 2010

HISTORY OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
Born on January 15, 1929, we celebrate a holiday in honor of a man who was not a president, nor an explorer, nor a saint, rather he was a Baptist minister and an American leader of the 1960s civil rights movement who was named after the Protestant Reformer [...]

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